Mr. Speaker, the parliamentary secretary may have had trouble concentrating. I remind him that we are talking about poverty here. We are talking about the budget. If the parliamentary secretary cannot see the link between the budget and poverty, he may not be fit to sit in the House of Commons. On this side of the House, we do see the link between poverty and the budget.
My colleague's remark is totally uncalled for. He should remain seated and steer clear of such irrelevant comments.
Having said that, I want to come back to the fact that we have asked the government several times to commit to an anti-poverty agenda. I think the government could have done a lot more with the budget surplus.
Let me give the House some examples. The government has more room to manoeuvre, because they literally stole from the provinces. We have to realize that. When we go over the budget, because we are debating its implementation today, we see a lot of measures taken in areas where the federal government has absolutely no right to interfere.
First, there is the millennium scholarship fund. If government members could just look at the Constitution of Canada, they would have a hard time explaining how the federal government can interfere in education. And yet, that is what they are getting ready to do.
It was decided that money could be made available, through a program called the millennium scholarship fund, for some of our fellow citizens who wanted to get a post-secondary education.
Why is the government making money available for this when it has absolutely no constitutional authority to do so? The federal government doesnot have the constitutional power to do so and, furthermore, since 1966, Quebec has benn offering the most generous loan and scholarship program in Canada.
The federal government worries about training and says “We think that it is important for people to make a commitment to stay in school for at least 11, 12 or 13 years”.
It is believed that men and women, in the 21st century, will change careers four or five times during their active life. So, they will be involved in a process of lifelong learning. Of course, the governments have the responsibility to give them access to the money that will allow them to acquire greater skills. However, it is not up to the federal government to give that money directly.
The Bloc Quebecois has often asked the Minister of Human Resources Development to negotiate with the National Assembly, which is the only parliament Quebecers can truly identify with in America, to find a way to give them access to the money the federal government intends to invest in millennium scholarships. There has to be a single program, one managed by the Quebec government.
Did the federal government listen? Of course not. It cannot shed its old attitude of interventionism and its lack of respect for provincial jurisdictions.
I could go on and on. I will address the whole issue of the Youth Employment Strategy. We all know that the Youth Employment Strategy deals with an area over which the federal government really has no jurisdiction. It is so true that, in the whole job training repatriation process leading to the manpower agreement concluded between Minister Harel and the federal minister responsible for human resources development, Minister Harel, on behalf of the government of Quebec, asked that the Youth Employment Strategy be included.
The Youth Employment Strategy is one of the tools available to the labour force to upgrade their skills on the job market. The federal government did not include it, which leaves us in a rather paradoxical situation.
The paradox comes from the government developing a program that does not make any sense because it is determined to interfere in areas like job training. This program does not make sense because it tells people that they cannot be unemployed, they cannot be studying and they cannot be on the job market in order to qualify for and participate in this program administered by the federal government under the Youth Employment Strategy.
The program is therefore geared toward a very specific clientele mainly comprised of dropouts. We certainly do not want to suggest that we should not help these people.
For example, in my riding of Hochelaga—Maisonneuve, there are 200 community organisations. These are instrumental in making my riding such a great place to live. Very few organizations are interested in the Canadian Youth Strategy because they are not the clients mainly targeted by the strategy.
This program is ill-conceived. It does not make sense. It would make more sense to be able to ask that this program and the money spent on it be transferred to the provinces.
I would also have much to say about the interference by the federal government in the field of health. The federal government's interference in this area is now a well-known fact.
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